Why Does SMS Marketing Software Demand Buyer Persona Analysis?

Effective SMS Marketing is all about them, not you.

What do you want people to do, now and in the future, once they opt-in?

The answer to these questions comes directly from the needs, desires and wants of your audience. You must always be considering what will motivate your audience to take the action that you want them to take.

You must also always be aware of what phase of the action life cycle your audience is in. If they are ready to take action, then plan for it. If they need a bit more information prior to taking action, then you need to prepare to educate them.

Additionally, you should always consider future campaigns and how current campaigns will impact the perception of your future campaigns. If your initial campaign is to get people to “text to make a donation”, you might not be able to motivate them in the future, to “text to learn more” because they view your brand as a donation request.

No matter the case, properly anaylzing and defining your buyer personas will help you execute a more effective SMS marketing strategy, both current and future campaigns.

Initial Call To Action

The first step in executing an SMS marketing software campaign is getting peoples permission to send them a text message. You might want to send them one and only one message. Or, you may choose to send them regularly schedule alerts. Either case requires their permission or their opt-in.

Whether you are going to use a mobile short code, like 88000, for the opt-in, or use the proper web registration form, you must use language that gives you the strongest chance to encourage the opt-in. To craft the message, you must know what you want your audience to do, and what will get them to do it.

One of the most important things to consider in your initial call-to-action is the elimination or mitigation of the perceived existence of risk and uncertainty. Tell your audience EXACTLY what is going to happen if they text in. Then, do EXACTLY what you said you would.

Your Response to the Initial Call To action

Every good SMS marketing campaign, shortly after the initial opt-in call-to-action, will follow up with a message either asking for confirmation OR indicating the next steps. In either case, the brief follow up message should crafted to encourage the action that needs to take place. If the message is delivered with a smart link, and you want people to click on the link, then your message should reflect what is most likely to motivate your audience to do so.

The Landing Page

If you use our text message marketing software, you have the ability to automatically link your audience, via a text message, to a mobile landing page. The most important considerations are:

What action you want your audience to take once they land on the page?

How ready is your audience to actually take that action?

If you audience is ready to go, then you can link directly to a landing page that enables the action you want. For example, if you are doing a text to donate campaign, you may link to the actual donation page if your audience is ready to donate. If however, your audience needs more information before they make a donation, you might link to a landing page that is configured with content and media that further strengthens the case for a donation.

The Secondary Call to Action

Like any other landing page call-to-action, it must be designed with your audience in mind, AND, the action you want your audience to take. On a mobile landing page, simple copy, images and video can and should be used to make it easy for people to act. If you make it difficult, or even worse, you make the call-to-action irrelevant to your intended audience, you will fail to encourage action. In some cases, like the case of wanting to raise money for a cause, this failure can have dramatically negative results, like failiing to help the people you are trying to help.

Ongoing SMS messages

In some cases, you are going to continue to provide alerts to your audience once they have intially given you permission to do so. Like your intial text message, each and every message alert you send out should be designed to represent the audience you are sending it to. If you are a politician and you serve multiple communities, segragate your list into those unique groups. If you are a restaurant that serves different types of food, segragate those groups into people that like steak, spagetti and chicken…in some cases all of the above.

The point is that you shouldn’t just send out the messages. You should consider your audience, consider what you offer and send messages to people that people really want to receive.

As always, thanks for reading my article. If you have any questions about SMS Marketing please do not hesitate to contact me directly at vmessina@otimollc.com.

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My work experience includes everything from advising businesses as a CPA, selling big business software for companies like Peoplesoft and Oracle and now, starting, running and growing a small professional services firm.